12 – A Mulligan, If You Will

Please accept my sincerest apologies for missing my daily post yesterday. After returning to my apartment yesterday from a Brooklyn brunch I felt under the weather and retired early to my chambers. I knew I should have written a short post, but I also knew my personal health must be my #1 priority. I hope this post can make up for it.

That being said, here is what I think about brunch: I don’t like it.

To be fair, I do enjoy the food typically served at brunch. I love most types of breakfast food, and appreciate that the brunch concept has extended the socially-accepted time of ordering breakfast foods during weekends to at least the mid-afternoon. At yesterday’s brunch I enjoyed fun little waffles and an exquisitely home-cooked avocado toast (without putting my ability to mortgage a future in jeopardy). I was surrounded by nice people and genuinely enjoyed myself.

My issue with brunch is that participants have to wait soooooo long in order to enjoy it. I can understand how this benefits those who stay out late and wake up late, but to a natural early bird like myself, the wait can be excruciating. If I ever have to go to brunch I’m always tempted to eat a breakfast snack before hand, though I often don’t because I feel as if that would ruin the whole point of brunch; brunch would essentially become lunch.

Yesterday, for example, I woke up at the time I’d usually wake up on a weekday (around 7ish in the morning, though trust me it wasn’t by choice). I have a hard time falling back asleep once I’m up, so I decided to seize the day and play some video games before trekking down to Brooklyn. In order to make it to Brooklyn by 13:30 I gave myself ample time to accommodate for typically-awful weekend subway service, though my propensity for arriving early to events, coupled with an unusually-swift ride to Brooklyn, left me with more than an hour to kill before knocking on my friend’s door. As I wandered around BedStuy, I was very tempted to get a slice of pizza or something small before an event I knew would have enough food to satisfy me. I refrained from doing so, but that wait to eat, combined with all of that walking around, may have contributed to my poor state later on in the day.

My reluctance to relish the true nature of Brunch may have even once snubbed a budding relationship. Once, as I tried to plan a second date with someone I met on OKCupid, I suggested that we meet at a restaurant around 10:30-11:00 for brunch. My thinking was that, since it was a popular restaurant, we should have planned to meet sooner rather than later in order to beat the crowds. Her reaction was mixed, to put it lightly. I compromised and made a reservation for 12:30, but after that I never heard from her again. I can’t help but wonder if it was my horrendous suggestion for an early brunch which led to that relationship’s early demise.

Considering how brunch has become my generation’s defacto meal of choice, there’s little doubt that I’ll find myself eating avocado toast and sipping on screwdrivers again. Unless I learn how to properly sleep in, I’ll continue to face these same struggles over and over. I will never shy away from a brunch invite, but when possible I’ll always try to push the start time earlier rather than later. Chew on that one, millenials.